Red Hat CIO Takes an Open-Source Approach to Security and BYOD

Every organization today faces a similar set of challenges about implementing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) practices, secure access measures and new technology deployment.

When you're the CIO of a technology vendor, those challenges are magnified, as subject matter experts on any and every choice that the CIO has to make, are plentiful and often vocal. That's the challenge that faces Lee Congdon, CIO of Linux vendor Red Hat.

In a video interview with eWEEK, Congdon explains what his job is all about and how he deals with the same challenges facing most of his peers.

Congdon also has some unique challenges and one of them is the fact that Red Hat is an open-source vendor, and as such, employees will tend to prefer open-source solutions. In many cases and wherever possible, Congdon said that he will choose an open-source solution, but there are situations where he has a business case to use something else.

"Our vision is to be a beacon for the use of open-source and now cloud technologies," Congdon said.

Congdon added that over the years his IT group has been able to prove to employees that they are passionate about using open-source technologies. In the case where there is no availability of an open-source solution to solve a Red Hat business problem, Congdon will choose a non-open-source solution. One such solution is Red Hat's use of Salesforce.com for sales and partner support.

When it comes to choosing an open-source solution, having the appropriate legal protections in place is important, which is why Congdon's IT group tends to choose commercial open-source solutions.

"The reason we tend to use commercial open source is for the same reason we encourage our customers to use commercial open source: You get protections and someone to call if there is a problem," Congdon said.

Watch the full video with Lee Congdon below:

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.